Tag Archives: Hollywood

While the sight of disgraced, repulsive movie mogul Harvey Weinstein doing the ‘perp walk’ into a lower Manhattan police precinct was satisfying to some degree, many of us – and by ‘us’ I mean women – can’t quite bring ourselves to revel triumphantly over the recent developments. Oh sure we felt a heady dose of schadenfreude in seeing that prick in handcuffs. But powerful men are, and always will be, powerful men. They can afford expensive lawyers, have stooges working in pr and the media, and employ mafia-like tactics to shield themselves from accountability. This will never change. And if one douchebag falls, another one will rise and take his place. Maybe I’m just cynical. I don’t know. But I would suggest caution in labelling this moment in time as a watershed. I have a reason for this thinking but don’t want to go on a diatribe here.

Instead, I’d like to share this newspaper clipping of screen legend Maureen O’Hara from 1945 about her experiences with the men in Hollywood. This is 73 years ago, folks.

With nothing but respect for the male readers of this blog, because you guys are among the good ones and some of you are my real life friends and colleagues, I still need to emphasize what O’Hara is getting at here; that a great many men determine a woman’s worth based on her ‘fuckability’ and nothing else. Or her willingness to do it, and just give in to sexual demands. In the words of Gavin de Becker, author of The Gift of Fear, “When a man says no it’s the end of the discussion. When a woman says no it’s the beginning of a negotiation”. Saying no to a man is like a class A felony in these jerks’ minds. Something unacceptable and almost incomprehensible. Because if a woman won’t pleasure them and satisfy their desires, then what’s the point of her existence??? She’s not even “a woman” at all, as O’Hara describes the attitude.

She sure looks like a woman to me. The Irish-born woman who starred in “How Green Was My Valley”, “Miracle on 34th Street”, and “The Quiet Man”.